Making it to the end of a game has always been a significant milestone.  Many early arcade games didn’t even have “endings”.  They were often a constant barrage of harder levels until the player finally succumbed to the difficulty and hopefully got their name on the high score sheet.   Most older console games didn’t have the ability to save your progress and provided a limited amount of lives.  So even if a game had a story, getting to the end in single session was challenging, to say the least.

In the time since then gaming has made many changes, including saving, checkpoints, difficulty levels and regenerating health, that have made it somewhat easier to reach a game’s conclusion.  With the popularity of multiplayer, some stories are also getting shorter as more development time is spent focusing on online features.  Some game still make it difficult.  Fallout 3, Oblivion, Far Cry, and now Dragon Age all push the length of a single player story to the extremes.  But the point of this article is not to talk about how the difficulty of games has changed.

The point is that reaching the end of a game usually takes a certain amount of dedication from the player and it should be a momentous occasion. Unfortunately, sometimes it is not.  An unsatisfying ending can really tarnish an otherwise good game.  So I’m going to take some time to jot down my thoughts on what a good ending should have.

It is difficult to nail down what makes the end of game great, but I think it should have three things: a conclusion to the story, a culmination of the player’s skills, and it must feel more significant than the previous game events.

A conclusion to the story is probably a no-brainer.  Any good story has a proper resolution that leaves the player (reader, listener, viewer) satisfied and hopefully without too many questions.  It is important to note that a satisfied player is not always completely happy at the ending.  A significant character may die leaving the player unhappy, but that does not mean that the story cannot reach a proper conclusion in this manner.  The exceptions are games that end with a cliffhanger, usually alluding to a sequel.  This can be done properly by wrapping up significant short-term conflicts so that they player still has a sense of accomplishment.  I feel games such as Half-Life, God of War II, and Assassin’s Creed have done this quite well in the past.

A game should not finish by teasing a sequel if there is not guaranteed to be one in the foreseeable future.  Especially if the game is terrific.  I’m looking at you Beyond Good and Evil.  (I know the sequel has be teased yet again, but I’ll only be happy when I’m actually playing it.)

Teasing unconfirmed sequels is torture.

The second was the culmination of the player’s skills.  Often over the course of a game the player gains more abilities.  This type of development should be capitalized on during the final sections of a game.  A challenging finale will test the players skills and be more rewarding because of it.

Finally, it should feel more significant than any other point in the game, or at least on par with the best.  Nothing is worse than having a game get the player excited for the big ending only to have it be underwhelming.

With these points in mind, lets head to some of the more disappointing endings and final bosses I have experienced in recent years.

1. Elements of a Good Ending 2. Recent Disappointments